


This Illusion

by henghost



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Jewish Character, Multi, Original Character-centric, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:08:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27919489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/henghost/pseuds/henghost
Summary: Alana Schrieck, recent photokinetic inductee to the Denver Wards, gains as a Mentor a Changer named Cornix, with whom she becomes quite enamored.
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1

_Dec. 24-25_

Alana arrives at the office block in a satin lavender dress and amethyst earrings, through which she bends and loops the light till they glow like little purple bulbs. It’s a tic. Not that it makes her stick out so much — the whole place is aglow at the moment. Red and green tinsel sparkles starlike from the ceiling. A tree sits tall and imposing in the corner, adorned with all sorts of novelty ornaments: light-up Triumvirate figurines, baubles decorated to look like something Dragon might make. . . .

She’s got on heels, too, which was a mistake. The Director told her it was all but mandatory to show up. Everyone’s going to be there, Alana. And in fact everyone _is_ here. We’ve got a who’s who of local celebs, decked out either in ugly sweaters or sexy Santa-colored minidresses. From her vantage point she spots Master-9 Enmity with an eggnog mug in hand, flanked on all sides by starstruck bureaucrats. Over there a certain Spyglass is engaged in rapid-fire craft-talk with his gaggle of Tinker protegés. Mostly, though, Alana watches Cornix. 

Cornix is dressed all in tactical clothes so she can Change without ripping anything. Presently she’s entertaining a small crowd by juggling empty cups with octopus tentacles. She’s not wearing shoes, instead she’s got on hooves. These bestial bits, though, don’t distract from her skin like smooth clay, her hair like onyx waves down bare shoulders. Alana can’t look away. She has to stifle laughter at the more absurd bits of Cornix’s routine so as not to appear insane. Why don’t you just go up to her, Alana? You’re colleagues now, after all. Why not, indeed.

Someone sidles up to Alana, says, “It’s great, right?”

She turns to find one Melvin Markey, the other recent inductee. “What’s great?” she says.

“It’s like we’ve been let into a secret society.”

“Or a fraternity.”

“You’re that type, huh? Wallflower?”

“It’s just all so much. So quickly.”

“It is, isn’t it? Maybe, you know, you should go ask _Cornix_ for advice. I mean, instead of watching her from the bushes.”

“She’s my favorite. She’s always been my favorite. Since before I had powers, even. I have her _merchandise,_ Melvin. It’s embarrassing. She’s supposed to be my Mentor1, actually.”

“Then you have an excuse to talk to her! Oh, c’mon. I’ll go with you. Aren’t we supposed to be, you know, courageous . . . ?”

Melvin presses lightly on Alana’s upper arm, and she winces but relents, and follows him, nearly stumbling, to the little circle around the one-woman zoo. Her arms are still tentacles, with red and bulging suckers like bloodshot eyes, and she goes, “Watch this,” and winks, and lifts all eight of them (each of their slimy tips curled around the stem of a wine glass) and from under her pseudo-armpits comes a gushing stream of black ink, which catches an accountant type toward the front in the face, and everyone cackles, Alana most of all. . . .

Accountant runs off, and Melvin pushes Alana toward Cornix. They lock eyes and Cornix takes a little sip from each of her glasses before going, “And who might this be?”

“Alana, ma’am.” says Alana. “Alana Schrieck. I’m, uh, new. I think you’re supposed to be my Mentor.”

“Right! Oh, I’ve been meaning to come find you. Don’t call me, ma’am, though — it’s Cornix.” And a (human) hand comes spurting from her chest to find Alana’s.

“Sorry,” says Alana.

“Hey, let’s find somewhere to talk. We should get to know each other, shouldn’t we?” She lowers one of her tentacles and extends the half-empty cup for Alana to take.

“I’m not old enough,” says Alana.

“I won’t tell anyone,” says Cornix, and winks. “Take it.”

And she accepts the wine as though it’s a loaded gun and takes a mousy sip and grimaces, and Cornix giggles. She giggles like all her animal forms live inside her throat. She flicks her head toward the door and starts walking, hooves’ clopping muffled by the soft carpet, and Alana follows. She takes her down a long hall (they’re in the administrative bit of the Wards HQ) while out the window snow falls glimmering through the amber glow of street lamps. They find a glass-walled conference room — the PRT’s all about _transparency_ of course — and Cornix waves with her free tentacle a card in front of the sensor to let them inside. There are chairs but Cornix sits on the floor with her back to the far wall, which is glass as well, and overlooks the mountains, all frosted like donuts this time of year. Alana sits beside her.

Cornix sets down all her glassware then retracts her tentacles, and out pop two long arms in their place. She says, “So what do you do? I mean in terms of powers?”

“It’s like a sort of photokinesis. . . .” says Alana.

“Show me.”

Alana performs that aforementioned tic till Cornix is squinting at her earrings, at which points she wills the light to make them disappear entirely. Cornix claps. “Beautiful,” she says. “Not quite sure how _combat viable_ it is, ha ha, but we can work on that. This is the first time I’ve been a Mentor.”

“I’m honored,” says Alana.

“Don’t be honored. I’ll be awful, I’m sure. Have some more wine. It’s Christmas!” Cornix kills the rest of the glass she’s on and moves to another just as quick. “One of the many upsides of this power,” she says, “is the ability to control just how drunk I get. Right now I’ve got the liver of a bear. But any moment it could be the liver of a chihuahua, and I’d be wasted beyond belief.”

Alana follows instructions. She holds her breath and lets the sour stuff tumble down her throat. A grapey warmth slides fiery along her insides and rushes straight to her head. More, more. It’s a Holiday. Soon the conference room begins to shift slightly when her focus lapses. Soon she can no longer feel the white chill at her back. She says, “I don’t celebrate Christmas. I’m Jewish.”

“Fashinating,” says Cornix, liver likely down to wolfhound size by now. “Not sure we’ve had a — a _Jewish person_ on the team before. _Mazel Tov!_ ”

“Thanks. Thank you for talking to me, Cornix.”

“I’d rather talk to you than those slime-people we call ‘PRT employees’.”

“I mean it. No one’s talked to me here who hasn’t been forced to, definitely not like this.”

Time passes. Heat kicks into high gear and its staticky sound seems to fill Alana’s head with cotton. She finishes two more glasses while Cornix’s organs continue to shrink, little by little. . . . At one point she switches her neck to a giraffe’s in order to grab one of the plush office chairs with her teeth and bring it back over for a pillow. 

The last thing Alana remembers is Cornix going: “. . .Comics. Comics. . . . I love to read those old comics. Pre-Scion stuff, I mean, from the Forties a-and Fifties. Bet you can’t guess my favorite. It’s Wonder Woman. Of coursh! Think about it. I mean really think about it. There’s a girl who really knew what it all meant. Right? Because seriously think about it: she comes from that island that’s all women. An enviable position to start, you know what I mean? But she doesn’t stick around. She helps _worldwide,_ Alana! That’s what heroism really is. We think it’s so — so nebulous. But it isn’t. That’s all it is. And think, too, right — why does she adopt the whole American aesthetic? Stars and stripes skirt. A _lasso_ for Chrissake! Because she understood. She understood what it all meant. . . .”

She dreams that night of Cornix as the 50 Foot Woman, torn white dress clinging tight and covering little. She reaches into a skyscraper window and pulls out a screaming salaryman and crunches his skull between her tall white teeth. She beats her chest and howls, and all the nearby water shivers in fear. 

She wakes to the light made blinding by the sea of snow outside, and all the anxiety deferred races back. She rips her head from Cornix’s furry backward knee and nearly vomits. Booze comes oozing from her pores. She stands and smooths her dress, and Cornix groans and mutters, “I’ll come find you later,” and grows a greasy coat for warmth and is soon snoring once more. . . . 

Which Alana takes as a cue, and heads for her barracks. 

* * *

1 The Denver PRT/Protectorate/Wards apparatus is a pioneer of the so-called Mentor Program, wherein members of the Protectorate proper become, depending on the case, trainers, life-coaches, or simply older/more responsible/“put together” friends. Mentors are assigned based on background and power-type. Does it work? Well. . . . What does “work” mean, anyway? Supporters of the Program might point to the drop in incidents of improper use of force by Wards, as well as an overall increase in self-measured mental health for all parties involved. Critics, however, might attribute these statistics to a relative dearth of crime in Denver and the surrounding area, compared to, e.g., the E.N.E. or Chicago branches.

[BACK]


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey the dates line up, at least where I am. This'll probably update pretty slowly, but who knows.

_Dec. 25_

Spaceship style quarters here at the ol’ HQ. Bigger on the inside, feels like. The floor seems to be made of one single tile, and goes on forever. The door to Alana’s fairly expansive room, even, doesn’t swing but slides open, which sounds like: _hisshh._ Here she is now in her civvies. The purple dress sits crumpled in the corner, along with those earrings, evidence of some egregious crime, and the cloth still stinks of that truly singular scent, the animal musk mixed with Cornix’s fruity, acrid, and all things considered pretty magnificent perfume. She can’t bear to be in the same room as it, and so out she goes.

No one else is here. Not the room nor the floor nor the building. The sole Jew on Christmas; how tragic. Mom offered to take her for Chinese food and a movie, but Alana said no. “I’ve still got so much to do here!” she said, which was a lie, of course. Plus the Chinese you’re liable to get in her hometown two hours south of here is — you might say — on the edge of edibility. For Hanukkah she got a sweater and some gelt she’s stashed squirrelishly in her underwear drawer, for fear the higher-ups with their elaborate (and purportedly power-strengthening, if you can believe it) meal plans might snatch back, if they found it, that last bit of home. . . .

Religion’s been in her thoughts as of late, it’s true. Certain parables half remembered from Hebrew School so many years ago crop up like long-suppressed trauma. These past couple months it’s been more often than not the tale of Jacob wrestling the angel.1 What else? Every day for her seems a new encounter with godliness. And here in the belly of the beast visions of Jonah aren’t uncommon either. Beasts, beasts . . . it’s all beasts. Cornix could, conceivably, become a whale. Now that’s a comforting thought. Wombish fantasies spiral galactic in her half-hungover head and prove difficult to shake. 

The snow outside goes from powder to crystal. It shows no sign of melting. Inside it’s silent save for the rumbling radiator in the corner. Hours of this; hours and hours. Without the others there is room to panic openly. She gets on the ground and panics to pass the time. There is so much about which she might panic that it all sort of runs together like a watercolor nightmare. She works herself up to a gasping dry-crying fit. She could (read: should) shower, because her skin still reeks of last night’s wine, or even start the book she’s been assigned to finish over the break, but this is what she prefers. Hours and hours of this.

#

A little later here comes a man in a lab coat, brandishing a clipboard. The door hisses to announce his presence and Alana jumps and wipes her nose and the man laughs at her. “Alana Schrieck?” he says in a thick German accent. “Medical check.”

No need to tell her twice, up she hops. She rushes to put on shoes then joins him. He smells of alcohol. She says, “Who’re you?”

“You can call me Doctor Strangelove.”

“You’re joking.”

“I’m joking,” he says, and drops the accent. “Doctor Andersen. Although, it would not surprise me if it turned out I had Nazi heritage. Dad was always sort of funny when I asked him about his pre-American life. Anyway. Right this way.”

Buildings here are brutalist in the truest sense of the word. Inside and out it’s all concrete blocks spotted with small square windows. To reach their destination they have to cross the inter-building bridge, and in their shivering sprint through the section of open air Alana nearly trips. This so far is what heroinism has involved: being shuttled thoughtlessly between absurd locales, each more bad-sci-fi, more heartless, than the last. Meanwhile Doc Andersen’s going: “So settle a debate for me, you parahuman you. ‘Parahuman’. It’s sort of a crazy term, isn’t it? It reeks, at least to me, of that PC madness that’s come to consume us all in recent years. Because — if I may be frank — there’s nothing ‘para’ about you at all. _Superhuman._ That’s the word I’d use. Now, my ‘colleagues’ tend to disagree. So what do you think?”

Alana answers: “Mm,” entirely outside her body by now. 

Corridors upon corridors, until at last they enter via hermetically sealed spaceship door into a laboratory-style setting. “Right this way, right this way.” Here’s his office at the end of it all, a room not unlike the kind your own GP uses. He has Alana sit up on the wax-papered table and takes a stethoscope to her chest, and his logorrhea has yet to die down: “My research here involves — well, I’m not in the strictest sense of the word _supposed_ to tell you this, but . . . well, it involves genetic analysis of people like yourself, ma’am. We know genetics influences your susceptibility to parahumanity, if you will, so what if we found out exactly how? What if we could use this ‘susceptibility’ to _select_ — for lack of a better term — for the trait of superheroism? Now, I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say, ‘But, Doctor Andersen, that to me sounds like eugenics.’ Ah, yes — the big E-Word. I acknowledge the optics aren’t spectacular. But on the other hand my answer to that would be, excuse my language, but would you please please please fuckin’ _grow_ a pair? Know what I mean?”

The corpulent Doctor grips Alana all over in his huffing assessment of her vitals; rubs his hand along her back all paternal while he jots down her heartbeat, massages her slender wrists while drawing cranberry blood from the crook of her elbow (a procedure for which Alana is too nervous to ask the purpose). 

“I mean,” he continues, “can you even _imagine_ the upside? Manufactured capes. Whole armies of ‘em. A beautiful vision, you ask me. Beautiful. It would mean the sort of strength no one could even consider contesting, and all of it right here, right here. . . .” 

Now comes the power portion: “Could you please, ma’am, put your hands on these sensors here and flex a bit of that energy of yours. If you would be so kind. . . .”

There’s a whir and flush along Alana’s insides as she obliges him. The light all around begins to swirl and spiral, first liquid then solid, signs and symbols forming like low BP eye-swimmers. Doc throws his head back to take it all in. He puts down notes at a furious pace. He keeps going, “Wow. Just wow.” The machine beeps. “Just incredible,” he says. “You can let go now.” He takes a seat across from her, and the stool with wheels screeches with the weight. “Do you mind — would it be okay if . . . I touched you? Just to really feel all that power?”

Alana swallows. His hand starts slowly for her face, and she can’t say a word. He puts his index finger on her cheek and breathes heavy, and then his middle finger. . . . A knock at the door interrupts him, though, and there’s a _hisshh_ and in comes Cornix, whose outfit today includes more backward knees, supersized tree-frog hands. The Doctor drops his arm and clears his throat and averts his gaze. 

“Alana!” says Cornix. “This guy bothering you? Ha ha ha.”

“Oh,” says Alana. “No.”

“Alright, well, are you done here? I need you. It’s urgent.”

“She’s done,” says the Doctor, and winces.

“Great. Let’s go.”

When they’re back out into the hallway Cornix says, “It’s not urgent. I just thought you’d like to get out of there.”

#

Cornix leads her to a dank dingy parking garage on the other end of the sort of courtyard/nexus around which all the PRT buildings sit. “I’ve got a car,” she says. “My own car. Why do I need a car? Why don’t I use cheetah legs? Well, cars are one of the great American pleasures, and aren’t I allowed to experience power and pleasure at the same time?” It’s long and sleek and black, like it wouldn’t be out of place in a presidential motorcade. Leather interior as well. Cornix gets behind the wheel, switches her feet to duck-flipper-type things and steps on it and maneuvers through the security gates wielding her IDs like weapons. 

“Okay,” she says. “Let me answer some of your questions. One: why are you here at ‘work’ on Christmas, even when there hasn’t been even a little bit of supervillainy? The answer is, Alana, that I don’t exactly have other engagements, let’s say. If we’re going to be working together you might as well know. I don’t exactly have what you might call a life. Two: you’re wondering, I’m sure, where we’re headed. The answer to that, Alana, is that we’re headed to prison.”

“Prison?” says Alana.

“Prison. Monroe Parahuman Detention Facility. Super-prison. It is in my opinion important to understand the potential consequences of one’s actions. This is lesson number one. I’m your Mentor and I’m going to teach you. Shouldn’t I? So this is your first lesson. Pay attention. I know a guy who works there. He says he’ll give us a tour. This will be on the test, ha ha.”

Alana spends the entire ride rigid. Out the window white mountains veined with green slide into an all-blue sky. They’re the only ones on the road. Silence for a while till Cornix goes, “Last night. Listen, I don’t do that too often, if you’re worried. I don’t drink myself to sleep in random conference rooms. Nor do I try and, I don’t know, lure minors. I don’t make a habit of it. I just wanted you to know that.” Alana doesn’t know how to answer.

The prison’s exterior is formed from semi-opaque indigo skyscraper glass. Great sheets of solar panels lie sunning in a fenced gravel lot off to the side. An institution like any other. Security’s only a couple guards, who all seem to know Cornix by sight. No metal detector, no pat-down. 

A lobby with a high ceiling features on its walls tall screens showing looped video of prisoners, all of them shot in that oversaturated car commercial style. Alana steps over to get a closer look as if hypnotized. It’s an HD rendering of a man, bald and pale a-and frankly a little frightening, holding up his handcuffed wrists for inspection, and he’s dripping like he’s just run a marathon. The purple bags under his eyes fill with sweat — FX sweat, surely. Then he starts to cry. The crying continues for at least a minute, sobs caught in slow-motion, bench press-strengthened chest racking back and forth. . . . And something about it gets Alana’s stomach all icy, and she can’t stop watching. Cornix pulls her away, though, before she has another fit.

A school principal-looking fellow introduces himself to Alana as Nicholas Dripffl. He says he’s the warden. He puts his left retina up to a sensor and a vault-style door twists open soundlessly. There’s an anteroom where visitors might meet the prisoners, and yet despite the anemic tinselly tree in the corner, red and green lights strung up in the rafters, it’s empty. Zero cheer in here. “The inmates,” says Dripffl, “are in their, er, rest period.” Another sensor, another empty room. Stainless steel cafeteria tables in neat rows, spotless, bordered on all sides by bars with peeling paint. Alana’s a little tempted to ask why, if these are some of the most dangerous people on the planet, theoretically, are there no guards?

They enter into the cell-block proper. Long stretches of hallway shoot away from the entrance in every direction: a true panopticon. There’s a thick aircon thrum above them now, and sweat’s starting to sting Alana’s eyes. “Er, let’s see,” goes Dripffl. “Ah, I know who you’ll want to visit. This way . . . right over here.” Their footsteps (hooves and shoes both) echo and re-echo and so on and so on till Dripffl stops them by a broad door, in the center of which is a little rectangle of reinforced glass. He jerks his head to indicate it’s alright to look inside, and Alana looks at Cornix and Cornix nods. Alana swallows and takes a peek:

It’s a man in an orange jumpsuit, skin ashen and gaunt around his eyes, standing in the center of his crate of a cell. Drool bubbles and dribbles around his mouth. And panning her eyes upward Alana sees he’s connected via slots in his neck to a series of clear cables, through which liquids can be seen flowing in and out to a rhythm resembling that of Grandpa’s dialysis machine, up through a central throughway in the ceiling. The nausea from the lobby returns full-force now. And what’s worse is this strung-up guy is _familiar_ , although she can’t remember from where.2 . . . 

Dripffl’s saying, “He’s got a couple milligrams of SomFlo in him at the moment, as well as a few CCs of Arretovox. We’re very proud of the concoction we’ve cooked up here at Monroe. We find it helps the inmates acquiesce to the routine, as well as reducing the number of, er, violent incidents — of all kinds.”

Alana’s cold all the way through by the time she drops to her knees and pukes over Dripffl’s shining black shoes. “Jesus fucking Christ!” says Dripffl. Alana spends a couple seconds retching up nothing and hyperventilating. Meanwhile Cornix attempts, fails to placate the warden. 

“Sorry,” says Alana, gasping. “I’m so sorry.”

“Get up,” says Cornix. She stands above Alana and offers no assistance. Peering up: Cornix is rimmed with the hallway’s phosphor light, arms on hips and scowling, and Alana feels as though she is so small, shrinking so fast, that any second now she might fade from this world entirely. . . .

#

A silent return. Cornix lets her out of the car without words, and Alana’s thoughts on her trek through the sun-carved snow are concerned mostly with weakness. The fact she is capable of being so weak in front of Cornix, she feels, proves her uselessness. She heads up stairs into the building, ducks her head to avoid the stares of the skeleton crew who’re beginning to return one by one. And that face . . . that face. . . .

She enters the Barracks ready to throw herself to the floor, but stops herself when she spots one Melvin Markey sprawled on the sole sofa. He drops the comic in his hand to meet her eyes and says, “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas,” says Alana morosely. “You don’t, you know, have to be here, Melvin.”

“You look a little like . . . crestfallen.”

“Cornix took me to prison.”

“Jesus the one in Englewood? That place was in the news, you know. Bad things.”

“So I could learn the ‘potential consequences of my actions’.”

“They’re all fuckin’ psychos. My guy, Languidol — which what a name, by the way — he told me the first time we met about this villain who jumped off a bridge to escape him. I mean he was _laughing,_ Alana. Do you think we’ll end up like that?”

“I threw up on the warden’s shoes.”

“Well. Can’t say I blame you.”

Alana finds her bathroom. She finds her toothbrush. Government-issue mouthwash. She wonders what her mother would say if she knew Alana was spending the last leg of Christmas Day with a boy, alone. She wonders what Cornix would say. . . . As for herself, well, Melvin’s been nice enough the few times they’ve interacted. They were the only ones in the “Orientation,” during which he asked lots of questions re: specific policy on which creature comforts they were allowed; Alana asked none at all. He mentioned he worked as a vigilante (his word), and he’s certainly got a comic-book cast to his features, all sharp angles and heavy lines. She spits and, emboldened by despair, finds a chair in the common room in which to sit. 

“When do you think,” says Melvin, “we’ll get our, you know, names?”

“It’s a PR thing,” says Alana. “I think. They have to understand our like images. Holistically.”

“I’m excited. It’s all names, you know. You get a new name and you’re a new person. Anyway. Wanna watch a movie?”

Alana relents, and they put on, speaking of creature comforts, _An American Werewolf in London._ With her new knowledge she recognizes the transformation sequence as unrealistic. True transformation is more magical than that. Smooth skin slips into matted fur more naturally, more like billion-dollar CG than low-budget practical stuff, except with zero risk of aging poorly. . . . The screen’s situated so that the only place to get a good look is on the too-small sofa. The heating system seems to have malfunctioned during the day. Wind slams into the building in whistling bursts. The little windows shake in their frames. Alana balls up. Melvin stretches. There’s no more natural light by now, and so our two stay huddled in the empty white glow of the TV, and jump when blood splatters against the camera.3

Melvin falls asleep midway through the credits. Alana finds her bed, and the movie follows her into another Cornix-dream: they’re sitting together in a dark theater when Cornix throws her head back to howl and Changes into a Buick-sized canine and rips Alana to ribbons. She wakes filled with the energy to redeem herself.

* * *

1. Jacob (a.k.a. יַעֲקֹב or _Ya’akov_ ), for the uninitiated, engaged in something of WWE match w/ a _malak,_ or angel, on the shores of the Jabbok, and after going at it all night the angel rechristened him (although of course Christ had not yet come along) Israel (a.ka. יִשְׂרָאֵל or _Yisra’el_ ).[<-]

2. What Alana’s failing to recall here is that in fact she was in the vicinity when this guy, codename Corpuscle, got arrested. In fact she’s seen him in his civilian clothes. This was in Freshman year when Alana, new star member of Kind Valley High’s debate team, took the trip (her first trip w/o parents) to DC with the rest of the young overachievers in order to attend Nationals. Although of course she didn’t make anything of it at the time, she waited in line for a water fountain behind this man, at the airport. What she missed, however, on the TV that night, in the hotel room already littered with wrappers, greasy pizza boxes, giggling caffeine-high classmates, were the reports of Senator Gratch shot through the neck with projectiles of Blaster origin. They showed photos: little kidney bean-shaped things glowing with a purplish energy.

Alana did manage to catch, though, on the big flatscreen in the hotel lobby the next morning, after gorging herself on the continental breakfast, Corpuscle’s mugshot, and the accompanying footage of Shaker-7 Erlenmeyer grinning in his congratulatory press conference. How Corpuscle managed to avoid the Birdcage, and how he ended up in a minsec facility in CO instead, a couple thousand miles from the site of his apprehension, is a little unclear even to those in the know. [<-]

3. It’s worth mentioning, too, the tension that occurs when Melvin turns to look in Alana’s eyes after the dialogue sequence: “He’s a Jew.” “How do you know?” “I’ve had a look.”[<-]


	3. Chapter 3

_Dec. 31 - Jan. 1_

It’s NYE at the HQ. Wards have trickled back in the inter-holiday dead-space and now stand chattering amongst one another, all sweating with rationed champagne and Good Cheer. Resident Tinker McTicker has set up something of a doomsday timer high on the westernmost wall, which beeps each minute and frightens everyone to no end. (Alana overheard someone ask McTicker what was going to happen at midnight, and McTicker answered only by laughing all the way into the corner in which he’s currently lurking.) There’s a mirrorball as well. Tall handsome team leader Omnidyne keeps asking Alana to put on a bit of a lightshow with it, and she has to keep shaking her head in a modest sort of way. 

No members of the Protectorate proper have made an appearance tonight. It’s good to give the teens a bit of space, of course, so that they’ll develop a sense of, you know, camaraderie or whatever, or at least that’s the rationale. It’s all rations here under the government’s thumb. They are allotted only a certain amount of morale. Anything past that is irresponsible, not to mention inefficient. And for what? The only superpowerful lunatics Alana’s come across so far have been bound like S&M fetishists. Not that she’s so bloodthirsty; it’s only that the peacetime environment might end up interfering with her goals re: Cornix, who is — this is the conclusion she’s reached in her recursive toss-turn nighttime thought process — the type to resent peace (that is to say, weakness) and all those who seek it.

She feels now more than ever that lack of tether, the bone-chilling Charybdal pull of Independence. Is this, she wonders, what it means to — jesus — “ _come of age_ ”? That’s what’s got her shaking tonight. For there is certainly a collegiate quality to the party’s chaos, see for instance Omnidyne leading his cronies now in a verifiably Greek chant:

>   
> There was once a new Ward they called Glock
> 
> Who shot bright silver shells from his cock
> 
> The Director screamed, “Wait!
> 
> You can’t just ejaculate
> 
> And expect the poor mob not to mock!”
> 
> So they made a device for the fellow
> 
> That would get the good public to mellow:
> 
> It went round his waist
> 
> As though to help keep him chaste
> 
> And turned Glocky’s big jizz-bullets yellow!

In the following cacophony of cheers and jeers, lecherous laughter, she scoots farther from the crowd’s center-mass, and Melvin, that Alana-seeking missile, is soon once again at her side. “Too, er, sophomoric for you?” he says.

“It’s an adjustment,” she says.

This past week she’s spent a significant amount of time with this Mr. Markey, due to their being the only ones on site (even the supposedly no-life Cornix mentioned she had “home business” to take care of). So there they were on the stale empty main floor. They watched _Full Metal Jacket._ Then they watched cartoons about superheroes. 1

Not much meaningful talk, of course, but some important info came out, not the least of which is his power: “If you’re quote-unquote some sort of photokinetic,” he said, “then I guess you could call me some sort of _pathokinetic_.” And Alana was too put-off to ask any further questions. At the moment he’s standing a good six inches closer than at that Christmas party. 

The clock hits 11:59 and Omnidyne rallies the young gods around McTicker’s doomsday clock and starts them off with a booming: “SIXTY!”

Alana joins him at the fifty-nine, against all odds. A definite energy swirls through the wet crowd (you might call it omnipresent, ha ha ha) and she is not yet strong enough to deny it. This is the talent for acquiescence she prays will get her through to the other side. 

“Forty-seven! Forty-six!”

No Cornix here now. No mother, no father. Only allies gained instead of assigned — the difference is so important. There is the Draft and there is what you do after. Fall in line, soldier. Left, right; left, right. Ho Chi Minh is a son of a bitch.

“Twenty-five! Twenty-four!”

Melvin takes her hand and she lets him. There is a party in Times Square where a single ball descends a lonely pole. Rose-tinted glasses that spell out some irrelevant number. It is only the celebration. Picture the ticker-tape parade. Douglas MacArthur has come home. Numbers change nothing. America’s decades are all the same. The ball drops. The bomb drops. It is VJ Day. The lonely pole is a flagpole. The rockets’ red glare is a night club’s neon. The White House burning is only pyrotechnics. The world has turned upside down.

“Three! Two! One! Ha—”

And Melvin dips Alana and kisses her. Fireworks.

_Dec. 28_

Master-9 Enmity sits in her cushy Denver digs reeling. “Demons” by Imagine Dragons (a favorite of hers since she discovered them during the sort of sanity-straining teen years to which most capes aren’t exactly strangers) booms between her ears, and the line “Don’t want to let you down, but I am hell-bound . . .” sends her into pillow-ripping hysterics. And seeing the blizzard of stuffing sends her back in time once more:

The Holidays saw her return to hometown Provo, where soft powder snow coated the valley, dimity for the virgin city, and nostalgia invaded via every opening. SLC Airport2 brought her back half a dozen years to the date of her missionary sendoff, and thereby memories of early tearful nights in bunks tucked tight into high dry corners of Caracas, which offered no relief from the The Center’s sterile wasteland, till a certain Elder Jackson came like a tall dark savior, lanky legs draped graceful over a great big rusty bicycle, and then over weeks: conversation snips, allusions to a post-marital world, some half serious skin to skin here and there, and at last, inevitably, citing sicknesses, backdoors, loopholes, etc. . . .

And once home more recollections, too many to mention here. Hugs from Mom (Dad passed three years ago) and twins Brigham and Brandon and selectively mute little sis Spright. She arrived just in time, wouldn’t you know it, to witness the ascendant Brigham play his last baseball game before the Christmas break, so the Binghams went in their baby blue Odyssey to the diamond, above which lights hung celestially, courtesy of the Church no doubt. Earthy smell from the steadily melting frost off the manicured grass. Four Brighams on his team (the Pioneers), and Brigham Bingham’s got by far the most potential. _Ping!_ went the ball off his bat and miles over the verdure, and Enmity made her hands crimson: that was her goshdarn _brother_ down there for goodness’ sake!

So the mood was something like ebullient by the time they returned home, in other words a long way to fall when Mom, post-kids-to-bed, produced from her meticulously ordered files a letter whose front flap bore a worrying seal. “It’s a summons, Alex,” said Mom. “You know what that means? A summons. It didn’t say for what. You never listen.”

“What? So I’m at their beck and call now? They can’t do that. I mean considering my status?”

“It’s gone to your head.”

“I just mean—”

“They can do what they like. And you will do what they say.”

Settled just like that. She spent the night brushing up on her sign language with Spright, who told her there had been an escape at the asylum near her school. 

Then in the early morning she ordered a cab from some heathen service (this being Christmas Eve) and watched the ads on stalks, well above the highway, go from orangeish to blinding white. She watched the beehives on every sign go by and thought: we are all bees. Now empowered, though, Enmity found herself belonging to two separate colonies. This was bound to cause problems. The steely palette of Salt Lake City opened up before her, the Temple its centerpiece. The “summons” gave an address for some bent decrepit structure stuck tickish to a gleaming skyscraper, and in she went, up old old stairs (there likely since that first great migration), through some creaking halls, and in a tall portly oak door to a sort of conference room, around whose mahogany table sat a baker’s dozen of bulging white men stuffed like lobster meat into too-tight suits. And at the far end, the head, stood the President. 

This was to come before God Himself. She experienced at first fear and then a perverse sort of excitement, for this was a situation no different, in the end, from facing down some kingpin. She felt the lives of these Important Men in her hands. She felt acutely the sensation of being the most powerful in a room full of power. She had more power than God Himself. But the wires in her head were such that she could do nothing about it. She sat humbly across from Mr. President. 

“Ms. Bingham,” he said. “I regret doing this today of all days . . .”

Gulp, went Enmity. “It isn’t at all a problem, Mr. President. It’s only that I didn’t expect, I mean, to see you.”

“And I’m sure you’re very busy. We have followed your career.”

“Oh, well. I’ve taken Christmas off.”

The silent men between her and the seer/prophet/revelator shifted in their seats at the crest of this exchange. A thimbleful of sweat plopped off a plump one’s brow and splashed across the wood before him, and he pulled a purple handkerchief from his breast pocket to mop it up. 

“There isn’t an easy way to say it,” said Mr. President. “And — appreciate, Ms. Bingham, this generosity I am affording you. I have great faith in your . . . level-headedness. If I did not I would not have invited you. If I had been worried you would shoot I would have sent a messenger. . . .”

Dead air from Enmity.

“So. As for business. Whatever God requires is right. We all can agree on this point. Now, what does He require in your instance, Ms. Bingham. This is the question at hand. I, His divine agent, am prepared to reveal to you the answer. And the answer is: you are hereby excommunicated from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Or — sorry: we have placed upon you certain _membership restrictions._ There has been an alteration in official terminology.”

How strange it was for a heart to thump like that in a scene so silent. All eyes involved avoided her. “What,” she said, “what does that mean? Why? How did this happen?”

“Well,” said Mr. President, “we decided — I decided — God decided . . . that you have no place in our community. It is an issue of perception is what it comes down to. There is no other way to put it: you are too strong. It’s bad optically. You understand. What this means is—”

“You mean because I’m a cape? But what about all the other friggin’ Mormon capes? What’s the difference? I mean Elder Explosion is a Blaster- _10!”_

“Please, Ms. Bingham, watch your language. The difference is Elder Explosion is a member of the Melchizedek Priesthood3 — and you are not. Elder Explosion has performed scores of baptisms — and you have not. The proceeds from the sale of Elder Explosion’s figurines find their way into the Church’s many charitable organizations — and where are your figurines, Ms. Bingham?”

It could be mayhem in an instant, she thought. A mess of men’s flailing skeletal limbs till all the old oak, all the new suits went red and wet. But of course the only option was to nod modestly and exit onto the gray streets and stare into the sun and stumble with her vision still filled with orange spots to the bus stop. She watched the woman in the seat behind her stick a needle in her arm and thought: I am no different from you. Only a road of repentance lay before her.

She found Mom scowling on the lawn, all Enmity’s bags gathered around her. She rushed to hug her mother and her mother did not hug her back. She whispered, “You’re a sinner, Alex. They told me. We shouldn’t do much talking, I think, from now on. My friends . . . I got you a car. And a plane ticket.”

Some dumbfoundedness and sobbing, then: “Can I at least say goodbye to my sister? And the twins?”

“I don’t want my children to speak with you,” said Mom.

She had no choice but to sulk to the black taxi, too ashamed to notice Spright signing sprightly through her window: _Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. . . ._

So Enmity was in the air when the clock hit Christmas. She imagined if she saw Santa out there sleighing across the starry sky with Vixen and Blitzen and all those silver-chested sons of bitches she’d slither her way inside his stupid milk and cookie head and make him hate all the silly unwitting children so he’d stick instead of gifts a couple metric shit-tons of pitch black coal down their ugly _fucking_ chimneys. And she woke the lonely sleeping salarymen with her cackling.

Now she tosses the mirror standing on her vanity to the floor and considers doing something with the shards. “This is my kingdom come,” goes Dan Reynolds on vocals.4 “This is my kingdom come.”

A knock at her spaceship door snaps her out of it, though. Right. Of course. There are still some so-called responsibilities. She is still a hero if by no means an angel. The door slides open and on the other end is none other than our girl Cornix brandishing an enormous hornet’s stinger between her legs. “Jesus,” she says. “What the hell died in _here?”_

“Sorry,” says Enmity. “Let me . . .”

“This is an important fucking meeting, En’. Or so I’m told. Get a grip.”

Enmity tugs her costume on and then they’re headed for the boss’ office. “So d’you do anything nice after the Christmas party?” says Cornix.  
“I had about a liter and a half of eggnog,” says Enmity. “And then I dreamt of Hell. You?”

“About the same. Except my Hell involved my ex, so maybe it was really Heaven.”

They’ve set up Conference Room #4 for all members of Denver Protectorate. And when they’ve settled Director Dimitrov goes, “We are aware of a situation in Sùd. . . .”

_Jan. 1_

It’s an unproductive breakfast. I.e. very little food consumed. The cafeteria’s suffused with an unbearable snow-boosted sun, and bellboys in PRT uniforms bring buckets for puke, soon to overflow. It seems someone snuck in something harder than champagne after Alana’s tipsy retreat to sleep. Here she is now with Melvin at a separated table staring green-gilled at him (and him at her), listening to the queasy stream of rhymes from Omnidyne et al. carried over from the night before:

> There’s a Changer whose antics are sordid
> 
> And they call this hot heroine Cornix
> 
> She switches her parts
> 
> So that she can start
> 
> Fucking lions and tigers and swordfish 

Then, a little quieter (although still crystal clear):

> There’s a photokinetic Alana
> 
> Who can make herself hot as a sauna
> 
> She twists up the light
> 
> And becomes such a sight
> 
> That boys jerk it from Greenland to Ghana

“Christ,” says Melvin, and makes to go over to them, only for his limp legs to foil him. . . . “Alana,” he says. “Look. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“I didn’t think you did,” says Alana, which isn’t strictly true. It was in fact her first kiss. Or, well, unless you’re counting eighth-grade class clown Carson Pick’s quick peck at the end-of-year dance, theme: Under the Sea. 

There was a moment, eight hours ago, when Alana, alone in her room (through whose thin walls boomed “Superheroes” by Daft Punk), smiled, and in her stupor realized it was her first true smile since arriving. Contributing factors included booze, the high that accompanies these massive passages of time — but did they include, er, attraction? Well. Maybe now isn’t the most appropriate time to ask, as up comes yesterday’s lunch.

_Jan. 4_

We meet the teen heroes today immediately after a “training session” with one Gristlemaster (Breaker-6/Mover-3). They’ve managed to make it back to the barracks. Who knows how. Alana’s slumped over the right side of the leather sofa, sweating. Melvin’s to her left, slumped symmetrically, also sweating. Omnidyne and McTicker both in their boxers lie perpendicular to one another, snow-angel-shaped, dripping like pigs too. Thinker-5/Shaker-3/Master-1 Fog-o’-War is slunched (a position distinct from slumped) lengthwise over an armchair, ice pack over her swan neck. She says, “The Denver PRT has an official corporate alliance with local soft-drink company Slurshalot.” (Brute-7/Trump-3 Glass Joe is the only one who had the strength remaining to reach the showers.)

“This feels like fuckin’ ketamine, man,” says McTicker.

“Our towels, the ones with the ducks on them,” says Fog-o’-War, “are provided by FowlTowels. They’ve also worked with Wimbledon.”

“I mean as in I’m trying to move but I can’t move. I see myself moving in my head but I can’t move. I really fuckin’ _see_ it. Y’know?”

“This is a La-Z-Boy recliner.”

“I’ve still got my arms. I’ve still got my brain. I’ve still got my muscles. So why the fuck can’t I move? Huh?”

“The patent for the ReelTimeRez-Sponse™ Haptic Feedback vests he made us wear, fun fact, belongs to Raytheon. Heard of them?”

“Actually — not at all like ket. Now that I think about it. It’s more like when you’re in a dream and you know there’s a monster coming and you can’t move. Know what I mean? When you can feel its hot breath at your neck and you’re screaming at your legs and they just will not fuckin’ move a millimeter. What if a villain came through here right now?”

“And now that you mention it the drones belong to Lockheed Martin.”

“This is what they want. They’re jealous. They know if they gave me half a chance I’d be on all those fuckin’ posters, all those fuckin’ commericals instead of them.”

“And those quote-unquote healthy snacks in the vending machines? You know outside the cafeteria? All owned by General Mills, baby.”

“Just fuckin’ forest green with envy, man.”

“Except the Slurshalot stuff, obviously.”

“Forest fuckin’ green.”

“. . .”

“Pisselmaster better watch his fuckin’ back.”

“. . .”

“. . .”

_Jan. 7_

Cornix says today’s lesson involves chess. She leads Alana to an office, says, “Yes, I actually have an office, believe it or not.” She flops a green and eggshell vinyl board onto a coffee table and lines up ebony and ivory pieces while her neck jumps in girth and length, rhino to giraffe and everything in between. The pace at which she’s performing these switches Alana’s never witnessed before. A blur of transfiguration. Any chance to win seems important.

“The thing about chess,” says Cornix, “is it’s all _known knowns._ What you see is what you get. This is what I want you to learn. This is what will be on the test. What you want to do, when assessing any potential threat is consider first the _known knowns. . . .”_

She goes on to explain the rules of the game, how the pieces move, etc. (although never exactly what a “known known” is), and Alana starts as white in her first ever game. On her time Cornix joggles her backward legs, whaps flippers and hooves against the ground, so hard and constant the sole window rattles in its frame. 

Fifteen moves later it’s quite even considering Alana’s newcomer status. Alana castles and grins at Cornix as if expecting praise. Cornix yanks the board away and sends the kings and queens and so spiralling under the low light. Alana Schrieck shrieks.

“There are no known fucking knowns!” says Cornix, a tiger down her throat. “What the fuck am I talking about!”

“Wha . . . ?” says Alana.

Breathing deep: “Alana. You need to know. You aren’t supposed to know yet but it’s not like I can lie to you. We are aware of a situation in Sùd. . . . Jesus I cannot fucking believe it. Why now? God — why now? Alana, you must listen closely: the Redcoats are coming.”

* * *

1\. To be specific Cartoon Network’s _Young Justice,_ created in 2010 by Brandon Vietti and Greg Weisman. It proved to be a smash hit with the pair. They sat slack-jawed for eight hours before the screen till they reached episode twenty-one, “Image,” at which point they stopped, for they realized it was too great an act to follow.

“Image” opens with a trio consisting of Red Tornado, Batman, and Martian Manhunter informing Black Canary (who has been working hitherto as a martial-arts trainer for the teen superheroes whose antics make up the bulk of the show’s action) and her romantic partner Green Arrow that there is “something [they] need to see.” They flick on footage of a sparring session between Black Canary and one Superboy, a.k.a. Conner Kent, an imperfect clone of Superman whose rescue from sinister biotech firm Cadmus constituted the show’s “inciting incident.” Then, after Canary has “won,” she says, “Almost had me that time, Connor. You deserve a reward.” And this reward involves, apparently, something of a makeout session. Here the showrunners leave us in the lurch, as it were, by cutting to the (short) theme song.

Upon returning to the action we find Green Arrow and Black Canary understandably upset. B.C. says, “That _never_ happened!” at which point Batman informs her she needs to keep watching. As the video continues, the amorous Black Canary onscreen morphs into one Miss Martian, a.k.a. M’gann M’orzz; green-skinned, flying, shapeshifting mainstay of The Team, as it’s colloquially known; niece of Justice League titan Martian Manhunter; and new girlfriend of Superboy. Manhunter assures B.C. that this is only “a Martian game”; she doesn’t understand how this might harm human relations. (And the adult-minded audience thinks: kinky.)

Cut to: the Martian girl in question watching TV. What’s noteworthy is this show’s apparent protagonist bears a remarkable resemblance to Miss Martian’s “Earth disguise,” i.e., the shape she takes to avoid looking Martian and instead look Caucasian (I use “Caucasian” and not “White” for reasons that will become obvious). This protagonist even uses M’gann’s signature catchphrase: “Hel- _lo,_ Megan!” But she switches the program off quick when in comes Black Canary, and we skip ahead to after she has explained why her “Martian games” might cause some offense. M.M. tells her regretfully that she understands. Just then, however, Batman comes over the intercom to tell all Team members that urgent business has come up. 

All gathered in the briefing room (M.M., Superboy, Robin, Kid Flash. Notable exception being Aqualad, official leader of The Team and protege to Aquaman, who Batman says he is “busy helping”), Batman says the issue at hand is that Rumaan Harjavti, “democratically elected” president of Qurac, has allied himself with a certain Queen Bee, the “dictator” of Bialya. As a result of this alliance Harjavti now supports the “baseless claim” that Qurac and Bialya were once a single nation. Here B.M. plays footage of Bruce Wayne and Harjavti shaking hands (astute viewers will recall that Bruce Wayne and Batman are in fact the same person) as well as stock footage of Quraci citizens — some of whom are hijab-clad, it’s worth noting — protesting this new push for unification. The general consensus is that “something else is at work here,” since Queen Bee has the power to “enthrall most men,” and “some women.” It is our heroes’ job to figure it out.

So off we go to Qurac/Bialya in Miss Martian’s Bioship, only to stop when they spot from overhead the owner of an animal sanctuary and her son caught in some sort of stampede. “The _Logan_ Animal Sanctuary . . . ?” asks Miss Martian. Our heroes land and superpowerfully subvert the stampede, and we realize the owner is none other than Marie Logan, star of M.M.’s sitcom. Her son wants to hang out with the superheroes and M’gann wants to meet her idol, so they agree to stick around. M.M. asks, “So what was it like to _be_ Megan?” and the eventual answer is, “The person you saw on TV isn’t who I am.” Meanwhile the son, “Gar’”, tells the others about his mother’s obscure sitcom (“only one season,” he tells us) called _Hello, Megan!_

At this point, though, drones, presumably Bialyan, presumably unmanned, accost the sanctuary, and although they are quickly destroyed, the young son is injured in the process. His mother says he will need a blood transfusion, and the problem is no one has O- blood. M.M. points out eventually that she could morph her own blood to fit in the kid’s system, an act which will turn him into another hero, Beast Boy, portrayed most famously by Greg Cipes in 2003’s _Teen Titans,_ spiritual predecessor to _Young Justice._ Meanwhile — since she needs “complete concentration” — the male heroes wait downstairs where the VHS for _Hello, Megan!,_ is on deck. What follows is a series of revelations regarding M’gann’s methodology for creating her Earth identity. The Megan in the sitcom has a boyfriend named Connor (we remember it was Miss Martian who gave Superboy his human name to begin with), is a star cheerleader (M’gann has recently joined the cheerleading squad for the high school her secret identity, Megan Morse, attends), and, of course, is quick to go, “Hel- _lo,_ Megan!” as she smacks her forehead. (There is a little “easter egg” at the end of the frankly quite catchy theme song: _Hello, Megan!_ ’s creator is someone by the name of Greg Vietti, ha ha ha.) 

As the boys stand around dumbstruck, going, “It must be a coincidence,” M’gann, having completed her medical duties, returns, and in Kid Flash’s race to conceal the fact that they, for all intents and purposes, have “figured her out,” he switches on by pure chance a live press conference from Harjavti, and in the background is visible one Psimon (pronounced just like “Simon”), longtime psychic foe of The Team. “[Psimon] must be controlling [Harjavti],” they assert. 

So we find them in the next scene infiltrating the Presidential Palace, and once they’ve ascertained that Harjavti has indeed been the victim of some kind of mind-whammy, they encounter an unnamed military leader who insinuates that he will tell the world it was them, the “American heroes,” who assassinated the president, after he has done away with both Harjavti and all his “saviors.” While The Team battles the rogue Quraci/Bialyan military, M’gann goes to find Psimon. She encounters him in a defunct theater, where he catches her off-guard, and says something to the effect of, “I will use your greatest weakness, Miss Martian, to defeat you,” and gives her a bit of a brain-blast, which turns her into a grotesque white-pink creature. The Team, sensing trouble, rushes to her aid, but are soon put down. We first believe it was Psimon who incapacitated the male contingent of The Team, but he implies it was in fact Miss Martian engaging in a bit friendly fire in order to keep her friends from discovering her “true self.” Is this white monstrosity, we are left to wonder, M’gann’s “natural state”?

There’s a psychic-battle during which Psimon forces onto M’gann a hallucination featuring her friends’ and family’s potential reactions to discovering this disgusting “true self.” They kick her first off The Team, and then back to Mars. Faux Connor goes, “Love you? I can barely look at you!” This series induces M.M. to unleash a kind of ultra brain-blast which renders Psimon catatonic.

Cut to: Harjavti exchanging terse words with Queen Bee, who came to the Quraci capital under the impression it would lead to productive diplomatic discussion — only, this is not in fact Queen Bee but M’gann morphed into her shape, mimicking her voice! The status quo is restored. The Wayne Foundation is free once more to do business with the Quraci government.

Then, back at the Logan Animal Sanctuary, The Team confronts M.M. about how they know she’s stolen her look, and she tells him she’s sorry, and that it’s time for her to show them her “true self.” We expect for her to return to her grotesque “natural state,” but she only goes bald, which is enough to satisfy her Team, who expect this easy resolution. Connor says something like, “I love _you,_ Megan. Not your appearance.” Yeah yeah yeah, we think. Megan, pleased with her lie, goes to check on the injured Gar’, and discovers in his sickroom none other than the realQueen Bee, who informs M.M. that she will tell everyone the pale-monster secret if she does not do as she asks. Credits.

“Postmodern,” said Alana (which, there’s lots to unpack _there_ ). “Hauntological,” said Melvin (probably misunderstanding the term). They agreed the episode seemed to indicate something about US foreign policy. Was Harjavti an analogue, perhaps, for Saddam Hussein, a strong ally of the US during the Iran-Iraq War of the 80’s, only to become something worse than Satan in the Gulf War? The TV motif seemed to support this claim. Or were Qurac and Bialya more akin to Israel and Palestine?

We could go on . . . but won’t. [<-]

2\.  The logistics of providing these vacations to members of the Protectorate can get complex. They are afforded, of course, only to those lucky enough to land in the pockets of the country where “crime” can be left to fester a few days or so without massive destruction/loss of life. Essentially what’s pertinent to Enmity’s case is the local chapter of the PRT has worked it, somehow or another, to ensure she’s unbothered by either fans or paparazzi while home, to ensure she gets the rest necessary to, you know, be ready just in case. (Odds are this wasn’t particularly difficult — Enmity’s not exactly on Wheaties boxes. Or at least not yet.) [<-]

3. It is necessary to be a Melchizedek Priest to perform baptisms, and to become a Melchizedek Priest you must first of all be a man. [<-]

4\. Funny bit of synchronicity(?) here: Dan Reynolds started Imagine Dragons after getting kicked out of BYU for engaging in premarital sexual intercourse.[<-]

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback appreciated :)


End file.
